Baby Boy's Big Daddy

When rap star and actor Tupac Shakur was gunned down in Las Vegas in 1996, Boyz N the Hood director John Singleton lost not only a friend but the center of his next project, Baby Boy.

"I'd been working on the notes for years, and it was actually the last thing I talked to Tupac about doing," Singleton says about Baby Boy, which opens today. "When he got killed, I just put it on the shelf. I thought there was no way I'm gonna find anyone with as much heart and soul as he did, until I met Tyrese."

With Baby Boy, the "companion piece" to the Oscar-nominated Boyz, the 33-year-old director delivers another South Central Los Angeles morality tale.

MTV VJ Tyrese Gibson makes his feature film debut as Jody, an unemployed ex-con who has two children by two different women and who still lives at home with his mother. Jody is an example of the "baby boy," a generation of men raised by single mothers who haven't faced their responsibilities. When Jody's mother (A.J. Johnson) starts her life over with a new garden and a new boyfriend (Ving Rhames), the 20-year-old Jody begins to feel pushed out of the nest. Rapper Snoop Dogg and newcomer Omar Gooding (brother of Cuba Gooding Jr.) also star.

In casting Tyrese (his one-word moniker on MTV), Singleton hoped to overcome the obstacle of getting an audience to sympathize with Jody, who is an affectionate father but also an immature, selfish liar who cheats on his girlfriend, the mother of his first child (played by Taraji P. Henson).

"I knew I had to get a guy who was very likable so no matter what kind of bad-boy Jody things did, you'd want to watch him. That's Tyrese, who's amazing," Singleton says.

"I didn't want a character who was obviously a hero. A lot of guys in the hood, just for survival, they can't be totally squeaky clean. That's the way a lot of these baby boys are. You see them at the mall, wild and crazy, but they are so charismatic. And these are the guys that are filling up the jails."

Singleton is quick to stress that his film isn't an indictment of young black men, but rather "a cautionary tale." He also says Baby Boy contains some of his most clearly drawn female characters, something women can identify with.

"These sisters have to hold up everything. They have to stay employed, take care of the kids and take care of their men. The men leave their mother's house and then are taken care of by the woman in their lives," Singleton says. "It's not an indictment at all, it's saying: `If you're like this, what are you gonna do?'"

Singleton, who co-wrote and directed Shaft, wanted to follow up with a smaller, more personal project. Baby Boy allowed Singleton complete control as a writer, director and producer.

"Shaft was a great popcorn movie, and it made a lot of money at the box office, but at the end of the day, I wasn't satisfied as an artist," Singleton says.

Singleton returns to familiar locations with Baby Boy, filming in many of the places Boyz was shot, including the South Central neighborhoods around Crenshaw Boulevard where he grew up. He still lives in the area, although above it in Baldwin Hills, but his production office and screening room are at 43rd Street and Crenshaw Boulevard, where he shows films to kids for free.

The area hasn't changed much, Singleton says, since he was the first black film brat, shooting Boyz N the Hood fresh out of film school in 1991.

"It's less violent there, but then again there is that element [present]," Singleton says. "It's just 10 years later, so there's now a whole new generation. Neighborhood friends still stopped by, though, asking if they could be in the movie."

Familiar faces show up in Baby Boy. Rhames, who starred in Singleton's 1997 film Rosewood, plays a -- ahem -- revealing role as Melvin, a tough, sexually athletic O.G. (original gangster) who dates Jody's mother. In one scene, Melvin fixes his ladylove breakfast in the buff, his modesty hidden only with a breakfast tray.

Singleton hadn't planned the scene that way.

"I didn't want him to get nude, but he just took off his drawers and started walking around the set," he remembers, smiling. "He's really proud of his body, he spent months working out for a [former heavyweight boxing champion] Sonny Liston movie that fell through. I had to say, `OK, this'll be fine, but you're gonna have to wear one of those pads in the front.'"

But perhaps his most difficult challenge was directing his own child. Singleton's youngest daughter, Cleopatra, makes an appearance as Little Nut, Jody's baby with Peanut (actress Tamara Bass).

"It was the hardest thing, directing my little girl, trying to get her to smile for the camera and in front of the crew," says Singleton, a father of five. She was crying so bad a one point, he says, that he had to bring in a double baby to do the scene.

"She was in my arms watching the double baby, and on the next take, she did it perfectly. She didn't want to be upstaged," he says smiling.

Although Singleton says he's "less moralizing" with his characters than he used to be, Jody is still urged by almost everyone around him to get married. Married once for five months himself, is this Singleton's wish for his own life?

"For me? Hell no. It was like jail for me," Singleton says. "I'm an artist, I can't be hog-tied. Right now, [my life is] making my movies and being with the kids."